Sen. Grassley Slams NIH-Director For Silencing Whistleblower Scientists Sounding the Alarm on Experimental Drug Trials

Silencing honest doctors and scientists who identify harm-producing medical interventions that had been adopted on the basis of flawed research methods, has become a pervasive pattern in medicine; especially in public health where the government has an interest in promoting a treatment, an intervention, or practice guidelines. A recent example of high level public health officials abusing their administrative authority is the attempt by the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Francis Collins and his Principal Deputy Director, Lawrence Tabak, DDS, PhD, who is also the NIH Deputy Ethics Counselor. They sought to prevent two senior NIH scientists in the Critical Care division of the NIH from providing information to the federal oversight agency, the Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP), about a current unethical NIH-sponsored experimental trial that increased the risk of death for critically ill patients enrolled in the trial. The Director of NIH and his Deputy violated the First Amendment which protects Academic freedom for employees of public academic institutions. Indeed, the Council of the Assembly of 24 senior NIH scientists objected to the agency’s muzzling effort and declared its support of the scientists’ right to speak. This aroused the ire of Senator Chuck Grassley.